Stripboard Layouts
Permanent versions, drawn and checked before a single hole is cut.
These are the builds that stop being temporary. Every one is a layout drawn in
Copper Bottom, and on these pages the layout file is the
build document: download the .json, open it in the editor, and it walks you
through the board hole by hole, checks the strips for you, and prints a bench sheet. That is why
these guides carry no numbered steps and no hand-copied coordinates - there is no second copy of
the layout to fall out of step with the first.
They are in the order I would attempt them: the ones I have built and heard first, then the ones that are drawn and checked but not yet soldered. Those carry an Unverified badge and a banner at the top of the page, because a drawing that has never been built is worth an evening and a bag of parts and you should know that before you spend either. The size on every card is strips by holes - the board each layout needs - so you can pick by the stripboard you already have.
All 10 layouts
555 Theremin on Stripboard: A Copper Bottom Layout
the first layout in the series, and proof of the whole idea: the 555 theremin soldered onto a 9×18 scrap of stripboard, drawn and checked in Copper Bottom and built exactly as drawn - it worked on the first power-up. Download the layout file, import it into the editor, and let its walkthrough, checks and build sheet carry you through the soldering.
Opto Duet: Two 555 Theremins That Play Each Other
two 555 theremins on one stripboard, coupled by nothing but light: a slow engine ticks, its bare LED flashes behind the output cap, a homemade vactrol carries each flash into the voice's timing chain, and the box chirps. With the verified layout file for Copper Bottom, the off-board wiring, and the story of why the LED only works on one strip. Built, boxed and demoed - about 45 minutes at the bench.
Devil's Triangle Drone
Paul Stevenson's three-oscillator drone, redrawn for stripboard and built: three LM358s each wired as a triangle-and-square oscillator, a fourth summing them, six knobs and one output. No clever chips, the same eight-pin op-amp four times over. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and the off-board wiring - plus the bend I added: two switches and a pair of 1K resistors that let the three oscillators lean on each other until they lock, slip and beat.
Cicada NAND
four Schmitt-NAND oscillators on one CD4093, each with its own pitch knob and its own gate - because a NAND only runs while its other input is held high, so every voice has an off switch built into the chip. Pull a gate low with a switch, a touch plate or a photocell and that voice stops dead. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and the off-board wiring.
Simple Ring Modulator
the oldest trick in electronic music, on 25 by 9 of stripboard: four 1N4148s in a ring between two cheap five-pin center-tapped transformers, three coupling caps, and no power supply at all. Feed it a carrier and something to chew on and it hands back the sum and the difference. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and the off-board wiring. Built and working with synths; what it will not hear is on the page too.
Dragonfly VCO
a phase-locked loop talked into being an oscillator. Most builds use the CD4046's VCO half and ignore the rest; this one keeps both, so a mode switch hands the pitch over from the knob to the phase comparator and the oscillator goes hunting for whatever is on the input jack. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and the off-board wiring. Built, and it sounds incredible.
Opto Duet 556
the Opto Duet on one chip. An NE556 is two 555s in a 14-pin package, so the built two-chip board redrawn around it: the tempo engine on one side of the chip, the voice on the other, the same fourteen pads leaving the board, and the reverse-polarity diode on the copper this time. Ten strips by twenty-one holes. Drawn and checked, with every connection of the two-chip build asserted before the file was written - and now soldered, and working.
Hive Drone
the six-voice Hive soldered down for good: one CD40106, a ceramic ladder from 100pF to 10 µF so every voice sits a decade from its neighbor, six pitch knobs, and six resistors meeting at one strip for a mixer that costs nothing. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and the off-board wiring. Built once, with only half the voices coming up - apart again for a pot rewire.
Grub Divider
seven flip-flops in a chain, so one square wave in becomes seven octaves down - each on its own switch and its own weighted resistor into a shared bus. The weighting is what makes it a mixer instead of a selector: turn them on together and the low octaves sit under the high ones rather than burying them. Makes no sound on its own; it needs something to divide.
Hornet on Stripboard
the amp every other build here eventually asks for, soldered down for good. One LM386 at a gain of 200, a volume pot and a speaker - because a 555 or a CMOS chip drives a speaker badly and this drives it properly. Fourteen columns by twelve strips, four cuts, five links, and a Zobel network so it stays stable instead of oscillating. With the layout file for Copper Bottom, the netlist and a 125B drill template.